Barbara and Larry Catuzzi on Friday toured the garden at Market Square Park named in honor of their daughter, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93.

Barbara and Larry Catuzzi on Friday toured the garden at Market Square Park named in honor of their daughter, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Chronicle

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Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, shown with her husband, Jack, was 38 and pregnant when she died.

Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, shown with her husband, Jack, was 38 and pregnant when she died.

Photo: Family Photo

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Tragedy victim's legacy grows at Lauren's Garden

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Her voice remains on the answering machine where she left it nine years ago, a window into the final moments on a flight that none on board would survive.

In a calm, collected voice, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas told her husband, Jack Grandcolas, that she loved him and that "there was just a little problem."

It was the kind of message that might be left by someone caught in traffic on her way home from work, not someone aboard a hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001, said Grandcolas, who met and fell in love with his wife while they were students at the University of Texas.

"I never heard the phone call," said Grandcolas, who was still asleep at home in San Rafael, Calif., when his wife called and left the message before allowing another passenger on United 93 to use her cell phone.

He doesn't listen to it often and has rarely allowed others to replay or hear her final recorded words ("It's just too painful," Grandcolas says), but he has saved it on a DVD and kept the original answering machine along with other of her belongings.

The pain of losing Lauren has been part of an ongoing post-9/11 struggle for those she left behind, many of whom will be at Houston's newly redesigned and reopened Market Square Park today for a dedication ceremony in her honor. Lauren graduated from Stratford High School in Houston.

Building on her memory

"It's not a thing that's going to leave," Barbara Catuzzi said. "We have it every day."

Nine years after the attacks, in which 19 hijackers took the lives of 2,996 people, emotions for the relatives of Sept. 11 victims have ranged from the shock of disbelief to the grief of loss to the tensions surrounding the proposed Park 51 community center near Ground Zero.

Most substantial for Grandcolas and the Catuzzis, however, has been the turn in their lives as survivors of 9/11 victims.

"Early on, it was such a public tragedy that we ourselves didn't want to go to social events or weddings, because it was a downer. … People would say, 'Oh, you're the one who lost her daughter,' " Barbara Catuzzi said.

But she, her husband and Grandcolas quickly attempted to build upon Lauren's memory, establishing a foundation in her name and repeating her story to others.

They continue to speak of her love and strength, which may have been epitomized when she and other passengers aboard United 93 decided to wrest control of the jetliner from hijackers.

Honored in California, too

The foundation worked with the city of Houston to incorporate the garden into Market Square Park, which reopened last month.

Grandcolas said Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif., named a birthing room after Lauren, who was 38 and three months pregnant at the time of her death.

"Obviously, Lauren may have given birth right at that hospital," Grandcolas said of Marin General, "so we thought it was the first and maybe the most appropriate place to have dedicated to her."

While the Catuzzis will be at today's dedication, Grandcolas decided not to come.

"I stay very quiet and solemn" on Sept. 11, he said.

He instead may visit Marin General. "Sometimes I stop by just to see how many babies were born this year in the room," he said.